Ella was quite wealthy, she maintained that her brother could become the most important black man in the whole world. She paid for his first tour of the Middle East in 1959, when he met Shirley Graham DuBois' son David in Cairo, David had obtained employment for his friend Maya Angelou, it was all very cosy in Cairo. Maya worked for the Arab Voice, her job was to agitate against the colonial powers, which led her to Ghana, where Shirley Graham and her husband W.E.B. Du Bois were living as guests of President Nkrumah...
The list of countries he visited on that trip is a long one, one of which was Lebanon. Where, and I'm sure it was a coincidence (sarc) and thanks to freeper Polarik, a relative of the famous Seattle babysitter's husband was Vice President of The American University of Beirut...Faud Sarruf. Who had a lovely daughter, born in 1940. An aspiring Shakespearean actress, who we believe (can't get at the records) studied at the United Arab Republic University in Cairo...
And I've run out of breath. Here's Ella:
There's still some question about who recruited who into NOI, but when Susan Blake tells you that Stanley Ann Dunham was going to take the very young baby she brought with her to show Susan, to Boston that very same day, where as far was anyone knew, she didn't know anyone...and wouldn't have had a job or a place to live, it's no great leap into the unknown to assume she was going to ELLA.
Any questions?
Great Clif Notes- and I mean that as a compliment.
I’ve been away for far too long to have a respectable question at the ready. On second thought, were the attempts to get at the records in Cairo, done from afar, as in cyber avenues, and or via snail mail requests? Has there been any boots on the ground? Are the records off limits to infidels?